A self-learning particle swarm optimizer for global optimization problems

Copyright @ 2011 IEEE. All Rights Reserved. This article was made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Particle swarm optimization (PSO) has been shown as an effective tool for solving global optimization problems. So far, most PSO algorithms use a single learning pattern for all particles, which means that all particles in a swarm use the same strategy. This monotonic learning pattern may cause the lack of intelligence for a particular particle, which makes it unable to deal with different complex situations. This paper presents a novel algorithm, called self-learning particle swarm optimizer (SLPSO), for global optimization problems. In SLPSO, each particle has a set of four strategies to cope with different situations in the search space. The cooperation of the four strategies is implemented by an adaptive learning framework at the individual level, which can enable a particle to choose the optimal strategy according to its own local fitness landscape. The experimental study on a set of 45 test functions and two real-world problems show that SLPSO has a superior performance in comparison with several other peer algorithms.This work was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council of U.K. under Grants EP/E060722/1 and EP/E060722/2

Orthogonal learning particle swarm optimization

Particle swarm optimization (PSO) relies on its learning strategy to guide its search direction. Traditionally, each particle utilizes its historical best experience and its neighborhood’s best experience through linear summation. Such a learning strategy is easy to use, but is inefficient when searching in complex problem spaces. Hence, designing learning strategies that can utilize previous search information (experience) more efficiently has become one of the most salient and active PSO research topics. In this paper, we proposes an orthogonal learning (OL) strategy for PSO to discover more useful information that lies in the above two experiences via orthogonal experimental design. We name this PSO as orthogonal learning particle swarm optimization (OLPSO). The OL strategy can guide particles to fly in better directions by constructing a much promising and efficient exemplar. The OL strategy can be applied to PSO with any topological structure. In this paper, it is applied to both global and local versions of PSO, yielding the OLPSO-G and OLPSOL algorithms, respectively. This new learning strategy and the new algorithms are tested on a set of 16 benchmark functions, and are compared with other PSO algorithms and some state of the art evolutionary algorithms. The experimental results illustrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed learning strategy and algorithms. The comparisons show that OLPSO significantly improves the performance of PSO, offering faster global convergence, higher solution quality, and stronger robustness

Feedback learning particle swarm optimization

This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Applied Soft Computing. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published and is available at the link below - Copyright @ Elsevier 2011In this paper, a feedback learning particle swarm optimization algorithm with quadratic inertia weight (FLPSO-QIW) is developed to solve optimization problems. The proposed FLPSO-QIW consists of four steps. Firstly, the inertia weight is calculated by a designed quadratic function instead of conventional linearly decreasing function. Secondly, acceleration coefficients are determined not only by the generation number but also by the search environment described by each particle’s history best fitness information. Thirdly, the feedback fitness information of each particle is used to automatically design the learning probabilities. Fourthly, an elite stochastic learning (ELS) method is used to refine the solution. The FLPSO-QIW has been comprehensively evaluated on 18 unimodal, multimodal and composite benchmark functions with or without rotation. Compared with various state-of-the-art PSO algorithms, the performance of FLPSO-QIW is promising and competitive. The effects of parameter adaptation, parameter sensitivity and proposed mechanism are discussed in detail.This research was partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of PR China (Grant No 60874113), the Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education (Grant No 200802550007), the Key Creative Project of Shanghai Education Community (Grant No 09ZZ66), the Key Foundation Project of Shanghai(Grant No 09JC1400700), the International Science and Technology Cooperation Project of China under Grant 2009DFA32050, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany

Niching particle swarm optimization based euclidean distance and hierarchical clustering for multimodal optimization

Abstract : Multimodal optimization is still one of the most challenging tasks in the evolutionary computation field, when multiple global and local optima need to be effectively and efficiently located. In this paper, a niching Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) based Euclidean Distance and Hierarchical Clustering (EDHC) for multimodal optimization is proposed. This technique first uses the Euclidean distance based PSO algorithm to perform preliminarily search. In this phase, the particles are rapidly clustered around peaks. Secondly, hierarchical clustering is applied to identify and concentrate the particles distributed around each peak to finely search as a whole. Finally, a small world network topology is adopted in each niche to improve the exploitation ability of the algorithm. At the end of this paper, the proposed EDHC-PSO algorithm is applied to the Traveling Salesman Problems (TSP) after being discretized. The experiments demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms existing niching techniques on benchmark problems, and is effective for TSP

Parameters identification of unknown delayed genetic regulatory networks by a switching particle swarm optimization algorithm

The official published version can be found at the link below.This paper presents a novel particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm based on Markov chains and competitive penalized method. Such an algorithm is developed to solve global optimization problems with applications in identifying unknown parameters of a class of genetic regulatory networks (GRNs). By using an evolutionary factor, a new switching PSO (SPSO) algorithm is first proposed and analyzed, where the velocity updating equation jumps from one mode to another according to a Markov chain, and acceleration coefficients are dependent on mode switching. Furthermore, a leader competitive penalized multi-learning approach (LCPMLA) is introduced to improve the global search ability and refine the convergent solutions. The LCPMLA can automatically choose search strategy using a learning and penalizing mechanism. The presented SPSO algorithm is compared with some well-known PSO algorithms in the experiments. It is shown that the SPSO algorithm has faster local convergence speed, higher accuracy and algorithm reliability, resulting in better balance between the global and local searching of the algorithm, and thus generating good performance. Finally, we utilize the presented SPSO algorithm to identify not only the unknown parameters but also the coupling topology and time-delay of a class of GRNs.This research was partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of PR China (Grant No. 60874113), the Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education (Grant No. 200802550007), the Key Creative Project of Shanghai Education Community (Grant No. 09ZZ66), the Key Foundation Project of Shanghai (Grant No. 09JC1400700), the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council EPSRC of the UK under Grant No. GR/S27658/01, the International Science and Technology Cooperation Project of China under Grant No. 2009DFA32050, an International Joint Project sponsored by the Royal Society of the UK, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany

Genetic learning particle swarm optimization

Social learning in particle swarm optimization (PSO) helps collective efficiency, whereas individual reproduction in genetic algorithm (GA) facilitates global effectiveness. This observation recently leads to hybridizing PSO with GA for performance enhancement. However, existing work uses a mechanistic parallel superposition and research has shown that construction of superior exemplars in PSO is more effective. Hence, this paper first develops a new framework so as to organically hybridize PSO with another optimization technique for “learning.” This leads to a generalized “learning PSO” paradigm, the *L-PSO. The paradigm is composed of two cascading layers, the first for exemplar generation and the second for particle updates as per a normal PSO algorithm. Using genetic evolution to breed promising exemplars for PSO, a specific novel *L-PSO algorithm is proposed in the paper, termed genetic learning PSO (GL-PSO). In particular, genetic operators are used to generate exemplars from which particles learn and, in turn, historical search information of particles provides guidance to the evolution of the exemplars. By performing crossover, mutation, and selection on the historical information of particles, the constructed exemplars are not only well diversified, but also high qualified. Under such guidance, the global search ability and search efficiency of PSO are both enhanced. The proposed GL-PSO is tested on 42 benchmark functions widely adopted in the literature. Experimental results verify the effectiveness, efficiency, robustness, and scalability of the GL-PSO